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Your World. Delivered. To the NSA.

Recent news reports have revealed that AT&T, Verizon, and
BellSouth are violating the law and the privacy of millions
of ordinary Americans by secretly giving the NSA information
about your telephone calls without a court order.

In January, EFF filed a lawsuit against AT&T for
collaborating with the NSA. This case is the best way for
us to uncover and shut down the government's secret spying
program and to hold AT&T accountable.

Stand up for your rights by supporting EFF and our case
against AT&T. And please forward this message and spread
the word to your friends and family members.

Government Files Secret Motion to Dismiss AT&T
Surveillance Case

DOJ Intervention Comes Just Days Before Hearing on Sealed
Evidence

San Francisco - Early Saturday morning, the United States
government filed a motion to dismiss the Electronic Frontier
Foundation's (EFF's) class-action lawsuit against AT&T for
illegally handing over its customers' telephone and Internet
records and communications to the National Security Agency.
The government claims that its legal brief and two
affidavits from senior intelligence officials that
accompanied the motion are classified, preventing even the
parties to the lawsuit, EFF and AT&T, from seeing them.

While EFF was not permitted to see the government's entire
brief, in a redacted version made publicly available the
government said that the case against AT&T should be
immediately terminated because any judicial inquiry into
whether AT&T broke the law could reveal state secrets and
harm national security.

"The government is trying to lock out any judicial inquiry
into AT&T and the NSA's illegal spying operation," said EFF
Staff Attorney Kurt Opsahl. "It is illegal for major
telecommunications companies to simply hand over private
customer information to the government. They should not be
allowed to hide their illegal activity behind government
assertions of 'state secrets' to prevent the judiciary from
stepping in to expose and punish the illegal behavior. If
the government's motion is granted, it will have undermined
the freedoms our country has fought so hard to protect."

EFF's federal lawsuit against AT&T alleges that the
telecommunications company has given the NSA secret, direct
access to the phone calls and emails going over its network,
and has been handing over communications logs detailing the
activities of millions of ordinary Americans. This week, a
USA TODAY report bolstered key allegations in EFF's lawsuit,
detailing how AT&T, Verizon, and BellSouth provided phone
call records about of tens of millions of their customers to
the NSA without any legal authorization. The same week,
lawyers at the Justice Department were forced to halt their
probe into the DOJ's involvement in the spying program
because they were refused security clearance by the NSA.

"The press has already widely reported on the illegal
domestic surveillance that is the basis for our case.
Allowing a court to determine whether AT&T broke the law
would in no way harm national security. Indeed, our case is
meant to protect Americans -- by requiring that AT&T follow
the law and protect its customers from unchecked spying into
their personal communications," said EFF Staff Attorney
Kevin Bankston.

On Wednesday, May 17, at 10 a.m., a U.S. District Court
judge in San Francisco will hear oral arguments about the
unsealing of critical documents in the lawsuit. The sealed
evidence at issue includes a declaration by Mark Klein, a
retired AT&T telecommunications technician, and several
internal AT&T documents that support EFF's allegations.
AT&T wants the documents returned and argues that they
should not be used as evidence in the case. For more
information about attending the hearing, please email
press@eff.org.

AOL Starts Pay-to-Send Email Shakedown

San Francisco - AOL has quietly flipped the switch on its
"certified mail" service, delivering pay-to-send email to
some of its millions of customers.

The Goodmail CertifiedEmail service allows large mass-
emailers to pay a fee to bypass AOL's spam filters and get
guaranteed delivery directly into AOL customers' inboxes.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) believes the pay-
to-send model could leave nonprofits, small businesses, and
other groups with increasingly unreliable service.

"Many groups suffer from what the Wall Street Journal called
'spam filters gone wild,' and their email never reaches many
on their mailing lists," said EFF Activism Coordinator Danny
O'Brien. "With AOL's system in place, AOL will be taking
money from big companies to skip those filters entirely. If
ISPs can make money for a premium service that evades their
malfunctioning filters, we worry that they won't fix those
filters for groups who do not pay."

While the creators of "certified mail" claim that their
programs help customers recognize legitimate worthy causes
and vital banking mail in their inbox, the first pay-to-send
mailing spotted by EFF was a promotion for Overstock.com.
Overstock has every right to reach customers who signed up
for its mailing list, but just because corporations have the
money to pay for email delivery doesn't make that mail more
important than any other non-commercial mail.

"We already know what commercial, paid-for mass mail is, but
we don't call it certified mail. We call it junk mail,"
said O'Brien. "Why should paying ISPs for delivery let some
companies gain special access to your inbox?"

EFF and hundreds of other groups have joined together in the
DearAOL.com coalition, which formed to urge AOL and other
ISPs to reject pay-to-send schemes. However, in a pointed
example of how ISP control of your inbox can go wrong, last
month AOL silently started dropping email that even
mentioned DearAOL.com. After EFF publicized the problem,
AOL quickly rectified the situation.

Court Slows EFF Efforts to Address Ohio E-voting
Malfunctions

Decision Delays Inquiry Into State's History of Voting
Machine Problems

San Francisco - The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled
last week that a critical lawsuit aimed at improving the
security and integrity of Ohio's voting technology will be
put on hold indefinitely. The ruling halts case proceedings
until the appeal of the government's motion to dismiss is
decided and seriously jeopardizes the chances that critical
procedural improvements will be in place by the time voters
enter polling places in November.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) had intervened in
this lawsuit, originally brought by the League of Women
Voters of Ohio, in the fall of 2005 on behalf of voter
Jeanne White. White's case focuses on the issues
surrounding electronic voting and seeks to increase the
security and accuracy of Ohio's e-voting technology, as well
as to dramatically improve state and local procedures that
leave the integrity of the state's e-voting equipment in
doubt.

Ohio's closely watched and widely criticized election of
2004 exposed a wide range of problems, complaints, and
irregularities in its voting technologies. Among other
things, voters reported unacceptably long lines,
inadequately trained pollworkers, and voting machines that
failed to record their votes correctly. Similar problems
were reported in the 2005 elections and in the May 2, 2006,
primary, including a chaotic election in Cuyahoga County
where election officials have launched a formal
investigation. Ohio, however, has no requirements that
counties keep formal track of such problems, much less
report them to state officials or to the public.

"We had hoped the appellate court would follow the trial
court's lead and let the case progress," said EFF Staff
Attorney Matt Zimmerman "Without this expedited schedule,
the case won't be able to marshal changes to Ohio's voting
systems before this November's elections. The state owes it
to its citizens to ensure that the problems of the past are
identified and won't be repeated. It has, so far, failed to
do so."

EFF intends to challenge the Sixth Circuit's recent ruling
and to continue to move Ms. White's case forward as quickly
as possible. EFF is working with the law firms of Kerger
and Associates and Zuckerman, Spaeder, Goldstein, Taylor &
Kolker as it pursues this case.

Public Interest Wins Big at WIPO Broadcast Treaty Meeting

The public interest won big at WIPO's latest meeting on the
Broadcasting Treaty: the contentious provisions creating
unjustified rights for webcasters and simulcasters will be
removed from the treaty.

While this is good news, the battle isn't over yet. The
remainder of the treaty draft covering "traditional"
broadcasters and cablecasters still poses significant
problems, and the webcasting and simulcasing proposals are
still in play, as a separate draft treaty moving through a
slower process. Drafts of the revised treaties are due by
August 1.

Why are the webcasting and simulcasting provisions so
worrisome? The treaty would have created new 50-year
intellectual property rights over Internet transmissions --
backed by technology mandate laws -- that would stifle
innovation, impede the free flow of information on the
Internet, and create new liability for Internet
intermediaries. This would endanger new and existing
devices such as TiVos for online radio and transferring
recorded programs to your iPod. In addition, creating this
new layer of rights above copyright would allow transmitters
to restrict re-use of public domain works or music you
created and Creative Commons-licensed.

The same concerns could still arise in the new webcasting
and simulcasting treaty, but that won't necessarily be the
case. Unlike the current broadcasting treaty draft's
expansive intellectual property rights framework, a future
treaty could focus on a more limited theft of signal or
services approach. Last week many member states --
including the U.S. -- expressed support for a treaty more
focused on signal theft, which the U.S. delegation is tasked
with producing before September.

However, it's still possible that webcasting and
simulcasting could come back into the "traditional"
broadcasting treaty. The U.S. and E.U. delegations stated
that if the WIPO General Assembly does not vote in September
to hold a 2007 Diplomatic Conference on "traditional"
broadcasting and cablecasting, they want webcasting and
simulcasting to be part of the package in future talks.

Even if webcasting and simulcasting are out, the remaining
"traditional" broadcasting and cablecasting treaty is still
bad news. The treaty could create the global legal
framework for tech mandate laws that rival the proposed U.S.
broadcast and digital radio flag proposals. As EFF, Intel,
and many others have noted, the combination of DRM mandates
with novel rights raises serious threats to innovative
technologies. As we've discussed in EFFector before, the
recent exclusive licensing arrangement between Smithsonian
Institution and Showtime Networks, Inc., demonstrates how
granting transmitters new rights is likely to restrict
access to the public domain.

These issues deserve consideration now, not as an
afterthought once the "traditional" broadcasting treaty is
almost a fait accompli in September. EFF will keep pushing
back against these proposals at future WIPO meetings.

Online Rights Canada Launches Action Center

Last year, Online Rights Canada (ORC) launched with the
joint support of EFF and the Canadian Internet Policy &
Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC). ORC represents the public
interest in critical technology and information policy
issues. If you live in Canada, now you can make your voice
heard through ORC's brand new Action Center. Even if you
don't, spread the word to your friends up north.

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